PBS Joins With Univision to Show a ‘Frontline’ Film

By Elizabeth Jensen

June 9, 2013

Viewers who miss the “Frontline” film “Rape in the Fields” on PBS on June 25 will be able to watch a version the following Saturday on another broadcast network — Univision. On that Spanish-language network, the film, which investigates the sexual assault of migrant farm and packing plant workers, will be broadcast as “Violación de un Sueño” (“Violation of a Dream.”)

The joint project, to be announced Monday, will be the first time “Frontline” has shared a film premiere with another American broadcaster. Journalistic collaboration is becoming increasingly important for the newsmagazine as a way to reach new viewers and produce more in-depth reports at a time when finances are tight. The show has no corporate sponsors; it is financed by PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and foundation grants.

In the last three seasons, “Frontline” has collaborated journalistically with 17 partners on 24 films. Partners, who mostly contribute in-kind reporting, have ranged from The Hartford Courant and The New Yorker to other public broadcasters, including NPR, the radio show “Marketplace” and “PBS NewsHour.” (A joint project is in development with The New York Times.)

The investigative nonprofit news organization ProPublica has teamed up nine times with “Frontline. “They’ve got very high standards,” said Richard Tofel, ProPublica’s president, adding, “We do not have our own video capacity at this point, and they are masters of the form.”

Most notably, in recent months “Frontline” has worked with ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” on a project about football and brain injuries based on research by the ESPN reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru. Reports have already run on both organizations’ Web sites. The two one-hour films will be broadcast in the fall; no decision has been made about whether ESPN will carry them, said Raney Aronson-Rath, the deputy executive producer of “Frontline,” in a telephone interview.

Last summer, in promoting Ms. Aronson-Rath to her position as heir apparent, David Fanning, the 30-year-old show’s sole executive producer, wrote that she had been the “driving force” as the show “has increasingly come to rely on complex partnerships with other journalistic entities and broadcasters.”

Partners such as Univision bring expertise in the stories being reported, and sharing a project means the work will get a wider audience, said Ms. Aronson-Rath. Sharing a film with another TV organization is in a different category, given the potential for cannibalizing each other’s audiences, but she said she expected the Univision arrangement, which she called an “experiment,” to bring “Frontline” new viewers.

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This season, new “Frontline” films have drawn an average of 2.7 million viewers, up more than 12 percent from 2.4 million last season, show officials said, citing Nielsen figures.CreditAndrés Cediel

PBS and “Frontline,” she said, are “not reaching as much of the Hispanic audience as Univision is reaching,” and the hope was that some of those Univision viewers would find their way to PBS. Each news organization will stream the other’s film on its Web site, and cross-promote the films on the air.

Already, “Frontline” ratings have gone up under the collaboration model. This season, new “Frontline” films have drawn an average of 2.7 million viewers, up more than 12 percent from 2.4 million last season, show officials said, citing Nielsen figures.

New films are streamed an additional average 100,000 times online in the month following the broadcast, “Frontline” said, and that digital audience has also grown markedly. The online audience is both wealthier and much younger: 70 percent is 18 to 49 years old, while 69 percent of the broadcast audience is over 50.

The joint projects are not without their challenges, often requiring lengthy contract negotiations over legal issues, and weekly conference calls with upward of a dozen journalists.

“Frontline” and Univision split the costs on “Rape in the Fields,” but the yearlong project has two additional journalistic partners, the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where the film’s correspondent, Lowell Bergman, teaches, and the Center for Investigative Reporting, which Mr. Bergman helped found. Two dozen additional reports, including an animated video, will appear on the various partners’ Web sites.

Andrés Cediel, the director of the “Frontline”/Univision film, and one of its producers, said by telephone that Mr. Bergman will anchor the 52-minute “Frontline” version, but the 46-minute Univision film will not have a correspondent on camera, because Univision prefers voice-overs to subtitles and did not want to put a voice over Mr. Bergman. When the correspondent was interviewing someone on camera, “it was very difficult to go back and cut him out,” Mr. Cediel said.

Some bilingual interviewees were filmed in both languages. The content of the films ended up varying relatively little, however, even though the PBS version will most likely be watched “by English-speakers that are concerned with this issue from an intellectual” and policy viewpoint, while on Univision “it will be watched by a lot of the victims,” said Juan Rendon, director of the Univision News documentary unit. “It works really well in both arenas,” he added.

Having a complementary audience made the collaboration, Univision’s first, easier, Mr. Rendon said, adding that “we wouldn’t have been able to do this on our own,” given the costs and reporting involved.

Correction:

An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the “Frontline” collaborations with ESPN. The project about football involves two one-hour films to be shown in the fall, not a single two-hour film.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: PBS Joins With Univision To Show a ‘Frontline’ Film. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe